Spire Synthesizer

[Dasheesh]

No the craziest thing about Spire are definitely the envelope and modulation behavior. It never acts like I expect it to and I rarely have any idea of what it's ACTUALLY doing at this point. But it's freaking fun to play around on.

[Synthman2000]

The distortion unit is supposed to mimic filter drive. it does have funny envelope behavior, and modulation behavior as well, but it's the only modern dance synth I know of that allows you to use the oscillators as modulators (giving away state secrets here). Although, it does needs higher resolution to take full advantage of it. It can be a bit fiddly with tuning such modulations and it has troubles tracking across the board when you do find something good. It's so much fun though, and the filter algorithms are so good I forgive them for such things. They are catering to a certain under age crowd after all.

Come to think of it I think I have some distortion on the FX "warm" setting rings a bell. I am slowly getting there with synthesis I know what could be termed the basics and do ok.

I have yet to go crazy with LFO's and tend to opt for envelopes as they seem more repeatable. Do most LFO's have some kind of phase/start/phase reset position control for when you press a new note ? I need to start experimenting with different shapes and destinations. I can go so far reverse engineering sounds I hear in music and then unless I can cross reference a sonic effect I hear with a specific parameter being modulated it gets trickier. Also a similar thing with very fast note patterns and or faster than 1/64ths modulations they tend to have non predictable effects in resultant sound so that you cannot dissect what is likely going on/reference with more simple and slower modulations.

Like for example a square wave LFO as a gate on volume being a very simple example.

I think if I start experimenting more it may breed familiarity and also some stumbling on certain sounds... the old "Oh...that's how it is done" Eureka moments.

Painful is the path of the music writer who makes his owns sounds ! It all takes so long, but I am in no rush really. They say Rome was not built in a day.

I find I get into a cycle that is roughly... listening, digesting, thinking (often in bed, the Spire GUI is often in my head at bed time at the moment ), then doing, reflecting.I think I am on the cusp of realizing some good things. That is what I think progress is.

[Dasheesh]

Painful is the path of the music writer who makes his owns sounds ! It all takes so long, but I am in no rush really. They say Rome was not built in a day.

Well, that USED to be what music was, self expression and exploration, but that was yesterday. Today it's about being young and willing to take your shirt off.

You have to ask yourself WHY you do what you do. It's my belief that most people don't ask themselves that question and don't care, because they do what they are told to. You can make the argument that rock and roll's intention was to get stoned and laid though!

I don't hate music or youth, but the problem I have is one simple question...where is the talent? answer me that. Where is the talent? Most vsti and DAW players cannot answer that. "talent" is buying the most talked about plugin...that's a bought proposition buy the way, but developers know this well, they live by the statement "there is a new sucker born every day" which I believe was a P. T. Barnum catch phrase. It means there is new youth to sucker born every day...and there will always be fresh meat. The music industry lives and dies by this philosophy now.

Anyway, stepping off the soap box, a lot of good modern software allows you to modify the phase, you might want to look into synthmaster. I love that thing.

[Dasheesh]

really, Spire is so close to being a great modern software synth, it really is. That's why I'm sticking with it. It needs some tweaks, and it needs some development, but it is soooo close. I don't doubt these guys, I believe they will get there. That's why I stick with them.

[liquidsound]

Make the INIT button activate with a right click at least.

[chk071]

really, Spire is so close to being a great modern software synth, it really is. That's why I'm sticking with it. It needs some tweaks, and it needs some development, but it is soooo close. I don't doubt these guys, I believe they will get there. That's why I stick with them.

What is it lacking for you to be a "great" modern software synth? I think it already is. One of the few things i was never quite content is the actual synthesis section. It is a bit "non-standard", which, of course, could be a good thing if done right. But, frankly, i think it is a bit boring, and limiting, as in "i really like to do bread and butter sounds with it, but apart from that, it's not really igniting my imagination and creativity". Mind you, i probably didn't even scratch the surface of it, but, i feel like it could really benefit from have wavetable oscillators, or a waveshaping section like Z3TA's. I like the VA synthesis of Spire, but, apart from that, i don't really enjoy to get deep into synthesis with it. At least i feel like it could do much more, and fuel the creativity more, with some motivating synthesis approaches. As the devs stated in their long term plans that they indeed WILL implement wavetable synthesis in a future version, i'm in cheerful spirits though that we will see some interesting stuff one day.

For now, i'd really be happy if they implemented a new filter type, and, as has been mentioned, maybe drive option in the filter section. I do like the Infector filter, and i also like the other ones, but, the resonance behavior could be better. Only small niggles though. Spire rocks.

[izonin]

Well, Spire's main strength/weakness is it's sound. What makes it perfect for background noises, also makes it not so ideal for foreground leads. Luckily, there's a great variety of hardware and software synths nowadays, and each can happily occupy it's niche in the mix.

[Synthman2000]

Well, Spire's main strength/weakness is it's sound. What makes it perfect for background noises, also makes it not so ideal for foreground leads. Luckily, there's a great variety of hardware and software synths nowadays, and each can happily occupy it's niche in the mix.

Interesting point. Both of the sounds I am making with Spire so far for this track are not really foreground/lead sounds.

Although one of them I am really, really pleased with mainly because it is something I have been aiming for, for a while and I nailed a technique that can now be applied to other synths for even greater effect.

I do wonder if the synth has such a character that it sounds like it sits above the mix rather than in the mix. It has quite a wide and direct sound at times. Not sure yet I must experiment, it might just need each sound tweaking into place to fit the places I need it to. That is all part of the fun, early days with it tbh. It is not fair to judge cause right now I just have about 14-15 tracks of sounds/phrases and melodies looped up over 32 bars or so and it is a bit of a mess mix wise (as I have not really started mixing properly creating on sound creation and melodic lines) and too much going on. I am at the mute 5-6 tracks before adding something new stage still and will be for some time till I mine some gold.

I have really only scratched the surface of this synth though.

I think the filters and effects are vital in Spire. They seem to combine to have a result greater than the sum of parts so I get the "Aliveness" thing people were speaking about in the aliveness thread. Every synth, as you say is different and has different strengths and weaknesses.

[Dasheesh]

Well, when you are talking about software synths you are talking about two things. Character and Quality. Character can be dependent on quality, but you have to separate the two IMO. You can have a great character instrument that is reproduced at a poor audio quality and you can have a poor character synth that is reproduced at a very high audio quality. Where it becomes dependent is when you start FMing/AMing/PMing etc.

What makes Spire so valuable and worth the money is that they allow this kind of modulation, the problem is that it was not their focus when making the instrument. They had a target audience that doesn't even pay attention to those kinds of modulations. It is more important for that target audience that it be as low cpu as possible. So it's a catch 22 scenario. Play to the strengths of the instrument that make it so valuable, or lower yourself to the lowest common denominator for sales.

It's the same dilemma that most developers find themselves in, because you can take these things much farther than the hardware will allow (unless you are constantly investing in top of line boxes like a name studio). For end users it's also a dilemma because you constantly want improvement as you hear it, but that requires constant investment. At some point you have to find a balance and decide WHAT it is you want to achieve, and more importantly I am learning to ask myself "is it musical?" You are going to have to settle at some point, where that thresh hold is ...up to you. There are tricks that you can do to get around the low cpu thing though. One of those tricks is layering techniques. The point of layering techniques is to thicken up the instrument and fill it in with out being obvious IMO, but of course people discover it and they go ape shit bananas and layer 60 freaking instances and it sounds like hell. Spire is one of those instruments that is meant to be layered. It would be so much more useful to me personally if I were able to take advantage of the modulation possibilities though.

[Dasheesh]

I should also add that these guys are constantly working on spire and I am thinking there will be another update pretty soon because they have been quiet for a little bit. They have also done a great job of trying to please both parties with the self FM/AM/PM of the oscillators. Cheers to them for that. I want to hit those lovely filters with the oscillators and go crazy though!

[Dasheesh]

So, if you guys want to over drive the filter, set envelope one to modulate->oscillator amp, and go 100%. It over drives the oscillator into the filter section I believe.

[recursive one]

So, if you guys want to over drive the filter, set envelope one to modulate->oscillator amp, and go 100%. It over drives the oscillator into the filter section I believe.

I think it depends on the filter model, e.g., Scorpio may sound like they are overdriven depending on the input volume, Infecto sound clean regardless of the input, they behave pretty much like the Virus filters with no saturation.

Virus has basically the whole set of post-filter distortion modes available as filter saturation, I wish Spire had something like this

[chk071]

So, if you guys want to over drive the filter, set envelope one to modulate->oscillator amp, and go 100%. It over drives the oscillator into the filter section I believe.

I think it depends on the filter model, e.g., Scorpio may sound like they are overdriven depending on the input volume, Infecto sound clean regardless of the input, they behave pretty much like the Virus filters with no saturation.

Yeah, i think so too. Perfecto and Scoprio do incorporate drive, when you drive the oscillators in the amp section, but not the Infecto filter.

[Dasheesh]

So has anybody figured out a way to slow these envelopes down? Also, I have 4 oscillators I can play with. I have a patch where I want to latch the amp of the first two oscillators and the second two oscillators to the mod wheel, so that when I turn up the mod wheel it takes out the amp on the first two and brings in the amp on the second two. I want them to be sweepable, but I'm unable to unlatch envelope one from the amp, which I said was a mistake for spire from the beginning.

[Dasheesh]

If I hear "crickets" one more time I'm going to punch a hole in my wall.